When things are done by halves, laced with mere political volubility, the result very often is dishearteningly dismal. The end use of tax payers’ hard earned money being different from what otherwise is sought to be achieved especially when spent on such noble mission like the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, is quite unfortunate. To elaborate, it is only to be believed that an amount of Rs. 200 crore spent for the last three and a half years, the performance of our State under the captioned scheme SBM (G) has remained bleak and dingy. Not only this, by all standards, it has remained down the national average, thus defeating the very purpose of the ambitious scheme of the Union Government. Why there are practically no signs of any performance, the reasons for it must be found out and remedial measures at the earliest taken.
Not only to speak of even below the average performance, an amount of Rs.298 crore under the scheme under reference and under Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), has not been utilized at all much to the disappointment of Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. The Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin was launched on Oct 2, 2014 by the Prime Minister to accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to achieve an Open Defecation Free and Swachh Bharat by Oct 2, 2019 marking the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. During the period between Oct 2, 2014 and Feb 8, 2018, Jammu and Kashmir incurred an expenditure of Rs. 200.10 crore under the titled scheme while Rs. 132.81 crore remained unspent despite the fact that the current financial year was to conclude within a few days only.
In this competitive era, while at each and every parameter, performance is evaluated on comparative analysis; our state’s performance in this area has been reported to be much far away from the national averages. Compare it with the nearest state, Punjab which is reported to have achieved 94 percent sanitation coverage while as Himachal Pradesh with similar topography as that of Jammu and Kashmir, has achieved cent percent or 100 percent sanitation coverage, we stand nowhere. Even physical performance of Jammu and Kashmir in respect of number of individual household latrines and community sanitation complexes is absolutely not up to the satisfaction of the Union Ministry of Sanitation.
Coming to the most important area of the scheme , that of providing safe drinking water, Jammu and Kashmir has failed to come up to the expectations of the Union Government so far as providing safe drinking water to the people is concerned. Looking to the official figures, out of 15958 beneficiaries, only 9002 are provided with safe drinking water facilities. Nearly 7000 habitations do not have complete access to drinking water at all despite the fact that huge funds have been provided to Jammu and Kashmir under National Rural Drinking Water Programme of the Union Government. Is not the incautious and carefree attitude of the concerned authorities responsible for this poorest performance? Very often, paucity of funds is the proverbial horse whipped at will, to offload the requisite responsibilities likely to be fixed and to preempt the move to be questioned. It is quite the opposite in the instant case where part of funds are not spent at all and those spent have not yielded any results, not to weigh in comparison with other states in respect of performance parameters.
Such dull and gloomy performance, as a natural corollary, is bound to attract adverse remarks as also expressing of displeasure by the Union Ministry of Sanitation and Drinking Water, again, with the sole aim of gearing up and finding the loopholes in getting results on the ground by the concerned state authorities. Moreover, our experience about adhering to time schedules by the implementation or work execution agencies of the State Government is, that still it is a mere concept rather than a requirement with them which needs to be discouraged and the underlying importance thereof brought home to the concerned by the State Government, very seriously. That the Prime Minister himself had to ask the State Chief Secretary, a few days back to gear up the official machinery for improving the performance of the state under the Swachh Bharat Mission- Gramin speaks in itself more than there being any need to further elaborate in these lines.
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